One example of an information processing system is a data center. Security is one of the most important aspects of data center operations. In data centers that employ Software Defined Networking (SDN), logical network connectivity among virtual machines (VMs) and other networked resources is relatively dynamic by comparison with the physical network connectivity of the data center. Inevitably, such dynamic logical network connectivity, as well as the implementation of SDN control functionality, create new implementation challenges in network monitoring.
Most existing network monitoring solutions rely on attaching physical monitoring devices to data center network devices in order to inspect traffic. This deployment approach works well in small and mid-sized deployment environments for relatively static monitoring requirements. However, in a large sophisticated data center, deploying and configuring physical monitoring devices for the traffic flows for a large number of network devices are huge operational efforts and consume significant resources.